From Tim Sanders "The Likeability Factor." In it, he paraphrases a line from Dale Carnegie's "How To Make Friends and Influence People"...

"You will win more friends in the next 2 months developing a sincere interest in 2 people than you will ever win in the next 2 years trying to get 2 people interested in you."

My version...

"You will win more new clients in the next 2 months developing a sincere interest in 2 prospects than you will ever win in the next 2 years trying to get 2 prospects interested in you."

Q: What if you approached (and targeted) each prospect because you were truly interested and fascinated by their business and/or the type of people they are?

How would that change your entire sales and marketing approach?

Are you fascinated by your clients and their business? If not, why not?

EXTRA CREDIT: Apply the same standard to your vendors/suppliers.

Almost every business I have come across sells in a similar way. Call, meeting, live presentation, written proposal, negotiate and... pray.

It's a tedious and painful process

I am certainly guilty of trying to follow the same path. Boy does it suck. If it sucks for one to do, how much must it suck for the
person on the receiving end?

If your sales strategy focuses on grinding the prospect into submission...you can't complain when your clients act like a captured populace.

What if every interaction with a prospect was a good experience for both of you? What if you had fun creating and delivering them? What would that look, feel and sound like?

Now....

What would your first meeting be like?
How fascinating a read would your bid response be?
What would your proposal look like?
What kind of live presentation would you give?

I am not talking about what your PR or Marketing company tells you it should look, read or sound like. What would be fun for you to prepare and present?

UPS has over 94,000 delivery vehicles, 282 airplanes (the 8th largest fleet in the world) and over 425,000 employees across the globe. Over the years they have developed one of the most sophisticated hand held devices ever devised. There are well over 70,000 of them deployed worldwide. They call it the Delivery Information Acquisition Device, DIAD for short. The latest iteration has 3 different radio types and is the instant entry point for a tracking system that averages over 10 million tracking requests a day.

So how do you put a device that sophisticated in the hands of so many people without bringing the company to a crawl or opening a small university to train everyone? Make the interface dead simple.

Every time I see those DIAD devices in the hands of my UPS delivery person it reminds me of an experience I had with a UPS driver almost 8 years ago. As I watched him click clack away at the large array of buttons on this intimidating notebook sized device with such extraordinary speed and precision I had to ask him “How hard is that thing to use?” What he showed me has stuck with me ever since. On the small monochromatic screen, just above 2 sets of blue up/down arrows were the words “Hit the blue up.” — “It’s great” he said “totally dumbed down.”

Now, he did not say “dumbed down” in a negative way. He was clearly proud about his speed and proficiency on this complex piece of electronics that anyone would be overwhelmed by at first (or tenth) glance. The story has stuck in my mind because that phrase, “dumbed down,” continues to come up so often over the years.

When I tell this story to clients, audiences or prospects the response I often hear is:

“No, no… I don’t want to dumb it down. Our customers are smarter, more savvy, more…”

When we work on marketing, new products, business ideas, web sites, presentations,etc...  We spend a lot of time making sure that everything sounds as complicated as it can be. Complicated has come to equal uniqueness. Why? The more complex we can make our offerings (Or make them sound that way) the more differentiated we will be. I believe the opposite to be true. Now more than ever.

When we get worried about dumbing something down, whose intelligence are we worried about insulting? Do you think the UPS drivers think the IT group has dumbed things down for him or her? Or does the extreme simplification make the cumbersome manageable? When someone visits your web site and there is language that makes each move incredibly clear do you think the visitor feels insulted? When someone can understand what you are offering and why they should care without having to go through 68 slides, they will thank you.

The challenge we all face is to make something so incredibly powerful and complex, like the UPS DIAD, yet make it so extraordinarily accessible that it takes seconds for the user to put that power to use.

Whether it is a multi billion dollar global communication system or making it extraordinarily clear where someone can find something in your catalog, website or store you are not insulting their intelligence, you simply give them ones less thing they have to work through.

Not dumbing it down would have caused the tightest ship in the shipping business to sink just when they were trying to make a huge innovation leap. How many businesses do not embrace new technology because they fear that doing so would bring the company to a grinding halt? If the new way is more painful than the old way then the old way will always be too easy to fall back on.

How much did UPS save in training/support/complaint/re-training costs by dumbing it down? Hundreds of millions at least. How much did making the interface dead simple change the kind of real time information it wanted back from the devices? None.

Whatever it is you are offering, selling or trying to convey, no matter how complex it may be, how do you explain it as easily as Hit the blue up?

Your customers are busy. They no longer like to do a lot of reading (If they ever did) and they want to understand what is in it for them in as short a time as possible. Do yourself a favor and dumb it down for them.

The late, great Johnny Carson once said about comedy... "If you buy the premise..you buy the bit."

It seems to me that when you dig all the way down, so much of the discussion on sales, marketing, buzz, tipping points, etc.. come down to figuring out a highly efficient way for people "buy the premise." But we are spending most of are time trying to get people to simply "buy the bit."

The key is to hone that premise so that it allows people to buy into it as personally, quickly and easily as possible.

Imagine if a comedian opened his routine with the equivalent of...

• A 40 slide PowerPoint or
• The first 200 pages of a 300 page business book or
• 20 pages of proposal verbiage or
• 50 phone calls and a folder of brochures and clippings or
• A slew of PR firms, ad agencies and Marketing guru's...

... they would get booed off the stage every time. And quite rightly.

Think of how a truly great comedian can quickly connect to you, can set out the environment/situation/problem that you can totally relate to and then..BAM...that quickly...they deliver a punch line that generates a memorable response... The "bit" is sold.

What is the premise you are selling? How could you hone it to perfection so it takes the receiver only moments until they connect and buy it?

Focus on the premise and the bit takes care of itself.

We all seek to find powerful ways to differentiate our companies. We search for new ways to market, new strategies and the big new idea that will give power to our claim that our business is truly unique.

We may be missing the most important road block...Working off of a pre-determined "Bucket" of the industry you are in.

If you start off by saying you are a consulting firm, a travel agent, an accounting firm or an advertising agency then you are stuck in the constraints of what history has constructed those words mean to people. The road is then more difficult as you try to tell the story of why you are different than all of the rest.

Why not first try to create an entirely new bucket based on the problem you are solving, your purpose or the need you are trying to fill.

Consider this quote from Scott Goodson, chief creative officer of Strawberry Frog, a new breed of (Bucket omitted), talking about what they can do:

"..they are more like political movements for clients and their products"

Even the author of the article (about a new breed of ad agencies) immediately moves to place Mr. Goodson back into a bucket with this statement "Some of what Goodman says is hype - he's and adman, for goodness' sake"

Perhaps it is hype or "marketing speak" but I would rather someone tell me that they are going to turn my business into a political movement than they are going to manage my ad campaign (Better still if they show how their unique thinking will make it happen). Ad agencies conjure up my own ideas about what I can expect and why I should be skeptical. The longer you can keep me from connecting your business to my pre-conceived beliefs the better chance you have of helping me understand how you want to help me vs how I believe you cannot.

If someone is presenting their company to you in a way that is uncomfortable because it does not fit into an easy "frame" that you can relate to, try to live with the discomfort a bit and focus on what they are saying first. You won't solve complex problems in fresh new ways by saying.. "We need to hire an __________."

Think about what you are actually delivering for your customers/clients and focus the description of what you do around it.

“It’s not what you say; it’s what they hear,”
- Red Auerbach

My wife, a 5th grade school teacher, taught me about Mrs. Fine a number of years ago.  There are always a number of kids in her class that, when asked how they are, always say "fine."  It does not matter the day, week or month or if they just had an incredible day.  It's always the same... "fine." 

Jump forward to any business networking, cocktail party or other event and, when the usual "how's business" question is asked, think about how often the answer is "fine" or something that is just as meaningless. If you tell yourself that business is "fine" long enough, you can be sure it will stay that way. Forever. 

Rarely is anything just fine and it is never always fine.  Business is good, bad, difficult, challenging, rewarding and amazing. And if you want the trend to move heavily towards amazing then fine is not your friend.  To change that you need to be willing to tell that person why you think business is the way it is and what would change it for the better or make it even better than it may be.

Every networking book talks about what you are supposed to say and do when you meet a potential prospect.  It is always about a strategy related to you extracting something from someone else.  Maybe a deeper connection, a chance to pitch your wares or a way to see how you can help them.  But nobody talks about what YOU can do when approached by that eager networker who asks "How's business?"     

If you want to escape the clutches of Mrs. Fine you are going to need to tell the truth about how your business really is.  That is the only way anybody that asks about it can learn the right information so they can actually become someone that can help you.  

"Fine, but I really would like to find a way to have a few more clients that ___________________." or "They are going well, and if we can launch this new product we are working on things will be great." are totally different answers.  

More importantly, in these extraordinarily difficult times, "Business is very rough right now. I need to find a way to figure out what makes my company unique and get my costs down. And fast." is a response that allows people to relate to you as a person. And business is personal. It is human. Fine is the answer a robot would give.  

Ironically, answering with that level of honesty allows the person asking you to feel free to open up and be honest with you in return. The typical facade of these interactions gets destroyed. And that is the best possible outcome. Getting their business card is not.

So... how's business?

I recently received a catalog from Zingerman's market in Michigan. They are renowned for their customer service... they teach courses on it and released a book about it.

What they also get right is making their marketing literature a fun and engaging read. It tells a story and becomes a bit of a page turner.

The description for their "Brownie Sample Gift Pack" from their catalog:

Evidence of Evolution

Once upon a time, we only made one kind of brownie. Connie made them in our tiny kitchen, they were Connie’s Brownies. Loaded with chocolate and toasted walnuts, we started shipping them across the country when customers moved out of town and called back to Zingerman’s, begging for a dozen. Their lure was magical, their name changed to reflect it—we started calling them Magic Brownies. Then, after almost two decades, we decided to expand our minds a little, try new combinations. Here’s the delicious result. These new delights rose from our original, primordial brownie and now, like their sire, fly all across America. Lately, they’ve also become a bit sassy—they know they’re nearly our most popular pastry and it’s going to their heads. Send them as a gift and you’ll find out why. The Deluxe version of this gift box has six brownies: 2 each of our original Magic Brownies with toasted walnuts, caramel Dulce de Leche Buenos Aires Brownies and Pecan Blondies. The Ultimate version adds four more: 2 each of our Orange Almond Magic and Genuinely Ginger Brownies.

Is your brochure (even if it is a simple corporate brief) a truly interesting read?

What if you turned it into something anybody would love to read?